The Consultant's New-Found Family

Days like these, he thought maybe he was doing an OK job of being a single parent. That Beth was coping fine without having a mum.

And then the guilt would press down on him. Squash him flat. If he’d taken proper care of Vanessa in the first place…

Guilt that was doubly compounded by the X-rated dreams he’d had for the last week or so. Dreams about a certain SHO with an elfin face, mischievous blue eyes, straightforward manner and infectious smile. Dreams he had no right to have.

He certainly shouldn’t have felt possessive when the coastguard crew had been discussing the new air ambulance doctor who’d attended the incident where a kid had got stuck in a hole when the tide had been on its way in, and how gorgeous she was. He shouldn’t have wanted to snarl at them to leave her alone because she was already spoken for—by him. Because she wasn’t. Lisa Richardson was a free spirit, someone who owed him nothing. Someone he couldn’t expect to give up her single lifestyle and take on his commitments.

‘Daddy?’

‘Coming, sweetheart.’ He managed to focus on his daughter until the classroom door opened, she kissed him goodbye and followed her schoolfriends inside. And then he stomped back to their cottage.

Why couldn’t he get Lisa Richardson out of his head?

This was the first time in two years that any woman other than Vanessa had haunted his dreams. The first time in two years that he’d felt that pull of attraction. The first time in two years that he’d been aware of someone walking into a room even when his back was turned to the door.

But he couldn’t let himself act on it. Couldn’t take that risk again. It wasn’t just his heart in danger: it was Beth’s. And Lisa’s, too, when he turned out to be Mr Wrong and let her down.

He blitzed the house, hoping that the action of scrubbing things clean again would scrub all thoughts of Lisa from his head. They’d worked together for a month, now, and although he thought she was a fine doctor—soothing the patients without being patronising, then treating them efficiently and effectively—she was completely wrong for him.

Number one, she worked in the same department, and inter-departmental relationships were always bad news for the rest of the team.

Number two, she could be engaged or even married, as far as he knew.

Ha. Who was he trying to kid? Ben had already mentioned that Lisa was available. And that she’d turned Jack Harrowven and Mark down when they’d asked her out. And he really shouldn’t have been quite so pleased about that.

Number three…Oh, come on. Surely he could think of a third reason. He should be able to think of a dozen reasons why seeing Lisa would be a bad idea. Between Beth, work and the coastguard, there wasn’t any room for a relationship in his life.

And it was completely irrelevant that he saw Lisa at work and sometimes when he was volunteering. On her last duty on the air ambulance, he’d actually worked with her: he’d helped her strap a casualty into a stretcher and checked her line before she’d been winched up from his lifeboat.

He scrubbed harder at the limescale in the shower. He was not going to think about Lisa Richardson. Or speculate how soft her skin might be. Or wonder how it would feel to have that beautiful mouth tracking down his body…

But it didn’t work. He just couldn’t get her out of his head. So he was still in a bad mood by the time he started his shift.

A mood that worsened by mid-afternoon, when he was called to see a patient who’d been in a car accident and was complaining of abdominal pain. A patient who was six months pregnant: just like Vanessa had been when she’d died.

Part of him was tempted to give the case to someone else, someone who could cope with this sort of situation without any memories to cloud their judgement. But then his training kicked in. He was a senior doctor in the department. This was his job. He had to keep his emotions separate. Memories and sentiment had no place in an emergency department. He had to focus on the people who needed him. His patients.

He walked into the cubicle. ‘Mrs Patterson?’

The woman on the bed was shaking uncontrollably. He sat down on the edge of her bed and took her hand. ‘I’m Joel Mortimer, the registrar in the department. Can you tell me what happened?’

‘I was in traffic. In a queue, waiting for someone to turn right. And someone rammed straight into the back of me.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘And now—now I can’t feel my baby moving. And my stomach hurts. And I’m wet—between…’ She shuddered. ‘Between my legs,’ she whispered. ‘But it’s too early. My waters can’t have broken yet. They just can’t.’

‘Try not to worry too much until I’ve examined you,’ Joel said gently. ‘Babies are pretty hardy, and they’re fairly well cushioned inside you. Does it hurt anywhere else?’ He was half expecting her to describe whiplash injuries.

‘No, just my stomach.’

Could be panic. But if her stomach had hit the steering-wheel and the wetness was blood…

Joel had a bad feeling about this. At the handover the paramedics had mentioned impact against the steering-wheel: not hard enough to trigger the airbag, but clearly hard enough to have hurt Mrs Patterson. He had a nasty feeling this could be a placental abruption—and a bad tear could be an emergency for the mother as well as the baby.

‘I’m going to examine you, if that’s all right with you, and meanwhile I’ll get a portable scanner brought in so we can take a look at the baby and see what’s going on.’ And, please, please, it would be just panic that was making her unable to feel the foetal movements. He’d do an ultrasound and the baby would be visible on screen, kicking away as if nothing had ever happened.

‘Don’t let me lose my baby,’ Mrs Patterson begged. ‘Please, don’t.’

If it was a major abruption, there might not be much choice. Not at twenty-six weeks. Very pre-term babies could survive in Special Care, but often it took months and months of heartache and worry, and the babies were often left with long-term problems. His heart ached for her. ‘We’ll do our best for you,’ Joel promised. ‘I’m going to order that scanner. I’ll be back in three minutes, tops. Start counting the seconds—I want you to take a big breath in while you say “one second” in your head, and then a big breath out while you say “one second”. Can you do that for me?’ He knew from experience that counting breaths would help to calm her, and concentrating on a simple task would help to distract her from her panic.

She nodded, and began to take deeper, longer breaths.

‘That’s perfect,’ Joel said with an encouraging smile. He was gone for just long enough to ask one of the staff nurses to get him a scanner, page the maternity registrar and order four units of O-negative blood as a matter of urgency, and then went straight back to Mrs Patterson.

‘I’m going to examine you now,’ he said gently. ‘Just tell me if anything’s uncomfortable or if you need me to stop. Don’t worry about being embarrassed or feeling silly—I’m here to look after you, and how you’re feeling is the most important thing right now.’

But he wasn’t happy with what he saw. Mrs Patterson had a small vaginal bleed—the blood was dark red and clotted—but she was starting to look slightly shocky, out of proportion to the amount of blood she’d lost. Her blood pressure was low, too. All the signs were pointing to a placental abruption—the impact from the car accident could have caused part of the placenta to tear away from the wall of the uterus. In cases of minor placental abruptions, the patient could often go home to rest and the tear would repair itself over the next few days. But with a major placental abruption, it could mean an immediate Caesarean section in an attempt to save the mother’s life as well as that of the baby.

Joel had a really bad feeling about this one.

Particularly when he couldn’t hear the baby’s heartbeat either.

Maybe the baby was lying awkwardly and that was why he couldn’t pick up the heartbeat. But he’d feel a hell of a lot better when the portable ultrasound scanner arrived and he could see what was going on. Not to mention having the obstetric specialist on hand.

‘Is my baby all right?’ Mrs Patterson asked, her voice rasping and shuddery with fear.

He didn’t want to panic her. But he didn’t want to lie either. ‘Try not to worry,’ he said softly. ‘I’m going to chase that scanner.’

To his relief, Jack Harrowven, the senior registrar from the maternity unit, was already walking into the department. Joel took him to one side and gave him a quick rundown on the case. ‘I think it’s an abruption. A big one. We’re waiting for the portable scanner, but I can’t hear the baby’s heartbeat.’

‘Oh, hell,’ Jack said. ‘Doesn’t sound good.’

‘It might be the way the baby’s lying,’ Joel said.

Jack shook his head. ‘If the mum can’t feel movement either, that’s not a good sign.’

Joel took a deep breath, showed Jack to Mrs Patterson’s cubicle and introduced him to the patient. The scanner arrived at the same time.

‘Please. Don’t let my baby die,’ Mrs Patterson begged again.

‘We’ll do our best,’ Jack said. ‘Can you pull your top up a little bit for me? I’m going to put some gel on your stomach, and then we’ll see what’s happening.’

‘Mrs Patterson, I’ve been called to see another patient,’ Joel said, ‘but I’m leaving you in the best possible hands. Jack’s the best obstetrician I know.’ He smiled at her. ‘He delivered my daughter.’

Though as he left he glanced at the screen. And what he saw told him that even an obstetrician as good as Jack wouldn’t be able to do much.

Ah, hell. He knew all about how bad it felt to lose a baby at six months’ gestation. Vanessa hadn’t survived the accident. And neither had Beth’s little brother: at twenty-four weeks, he’d been just too tiny.

Life, he thought savagely, really sucked sometimes.

‘You all right?’ Lisa asked when he almost walked straight into her in the corridor.